Clever student overturns £60 parking ticket by using ChatGPT AI to write appeal
A clever student in York used artificial intelligence to successfully appeal a parking fine.
Millie Houlton, 22, managed to overturn the fine she received from York City Council after asking ChatGPT to write a response letter for her.
She said to the software "please help me write a letter to the council, they gave me a parking ticket" before sending it off to the local authority.
Millie, who attends York St John University, said the fine was incorrectly issued to her because she has a permit to park on the street, the BBC reported.
She even considered paying the fine because her final year studies had given her so much work to do.
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'I'll just see if ChatGPT can do it for me,' Millie said (SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)Millie said: "I was like, 'oh I don't need this fine, I'm a student' but trying to articulate what I wanted to say was pretty difficult so I thought I'll just see if ChatGPT can do it for me.
"I put in all my details about where and when it happened, why it was wrong and my reference for the fine and it came back with this perfectly formed personalised response within minutes."
Millie has also used the software for social activities like an Easter egg hunt for her running club.
"I explained it was an Easter theme, put in all the locations that I wanted to go to and gave me riddles, clues and everything," she added.
The York student isn't the first to use the software to overturn a fine. Last month, Shaun Bosley, from Brighton was hit with a £100 'final notice' from National Car Parks (NCP).
Student Ed Daniels' software start-up AIED.UK scans essays for AI-generated contentHe had dropped off a friend at Gatwick Airport and said he used ChatGPT's argument of the fine causing "undue stress and hardship."
It also questioned why NCP did not provide "information regarding the circumstances" as to why Mr Bosley had failed to receive a first notice.
Mr Bosley said NCP replied "the next day" and reduced the fine to £15, which was the original amount.
The software - co-founded by billionaire and Twitter CEO Elon Musk - the controversial software attracted the spotlight when it was used to
It has been used by people for all sorts of things including by men seeking dates on the dating app Tinder.
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It comes as a student is 'fighting fire with fire' after building an artificial intelligence app which can recognise if an essay has been written by a bot.
Ed Daniels' software start-up AIED.UK scans essays for AI-generated content and calculates the probability it was drafted by a computer.
AI bots like ChatGPT - which was launched in November and quickly rose to notoriety for its articulate responses - use large data sets and complex algorithms to produce informed and well-written answers to user searches.
The technology is increasingly being utilised to compose emails, write computer code and create CVs, but it also has the potential to be used in essays and other university coursework, which critics say is tantamount to cheating.
University of Bristol student Ed said: “AI is an amazing tool and something that I really want to see universities and students using more. But it’s also clear that some will abuse it to cheat.
"No-one went to university thinking ‘I’m going to get a chat bot to write my coursework’, so this is a way of making things fair.
“At the same time, university is meant to prepare students for the working world, and it’s looking more and more like AI is going to be the future of the working world.
“AI, I believe, is going to become a mainstay of education. But it should be used to cut time, not corners – and definitely not for cheating.”
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